Prior to the events of the film, Lando made a career as a gambler, con artist, playboy, mining engineer, and businessman, and was the owner of the Millennium Falcon until losing the ship to Han in a bet.

In Return of the Jedi (1983), after becoming a general in the Rebel Alliance, Lando helps rescue Han from Jabba the Hutt and leads the attack on the second Death Star.

Donald Glover portrays a younger Lando in the standalone film Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), which depicts the beginning of his relationship with Han.

Williams was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Lando in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

When writing The Empire Strikes Back, George Lucas planned to introduce a gambler-type character, which developed into Lando Calrissian.

Wanting the character to be a foil to the "rough" swashbuckler Han Solo (possibly an old friend), Lucas envisioned Lando as a cool con man with the elegance of James Bond and wit of Star Trek's Spock.

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, Glover decided to deliberately use "Han" instead of "Hahn" in order to honor the character's trait.

[14] Lando is portrayed by Billy Dee Williams in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Return of the Jedi (1983), and The Rise of Skywalker (2019), and by Donald Glover in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018).

When Han, Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) arrive at Cloud City, Lando welcomes them as guests of honor – only to betray them to Darth Vader (portrayed by David Prowse, voiced by James Earl Jones), who plans to use them as bait to ensnare Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill).

[17] During the early development of the film, director Rian Johnson briefly considered bringing back Lando as the codebreaker that Resistance members Finn (John Boyega) and Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) seek in the coastal city of Canto Bight, but Lando was finally written out of the film's script, with the codebreaker role ultimately going to Benicio del Toro's character DJ.

[18] Lando finally reappeared in 2019's The Rise of Skywalker, marking one of the longest intervals between portrayals of a character by the same actor in American film history.

After the tragedy of losing his daughter and his failure in a quest with Luke Skywalker to find answers about the growing darkness in the Force, Lando left his wife and settled on the desert planet of Pasaana, adopting a life of solitude.

Lando returns in The Rise of Skywalker on Pasaana, appearing jovial and guiding Rey (Daisy Ridley), Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), Finn, and Chewbacca toward a clue for the whereabouts of the Sith wayfinder.

At the end of the film, as the galaxy is celebrating the Resistance's victory against Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) and the Sith Eternal, Jannah (Naomi Ackie), a former stormtrooper, approaches Lando and says she does not know where she is from; he tells her that they will find out together.

Donald Glover portrays a younger Lando in the 2018 standalone film Solo: A Star Wars Story, which takes place roughly thirteen years before The Empire Strikes Back.

"[22][23] In the film, Lando is introduced as a gambler and semi-retired smuggler who owns a ship fast enough for Han and his associates to use in stealing a load of raw starship fuel.

During the heist and subsequent escape, Lando is injured and his droid co-pilot L3-37 is irreparably damaged, but Han brings the Falcon to safety with help from L3's navigational database after he hotwires it into the ship's computer.

The crew become Lando's reluctant business partners following the ordeal, leading to their first encounter with the crime boss Azmorigan (voiced by James Hong).

The 2020 relaunch of Marvel's Star Wars series, picking up at the tail end of The Empire Strikes Back, reveals that Lando returns to Cloud City to retrieve Lobot and help Luke look for his lightsaber.

The novel Star Wars: Last Shot reveals that between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, Lando is considering settling down with a Twi'lek girlfriend.

Kevin J. Anderson stated that Lucasfilm toyed with the idea of killing off Lando, noting the character had run his course for Expanded Universe authors in the 1990s.

[37] The series is set 3–2 years before the original Star Wars film,[38] and is brought into chronological context with the rest of the Expanded Universe in Rebel Dawn (1998), the final book of A. C. Crispin's Han Solo Trilogy.

[39] The novelization of Solo: A Star Wars Story makes reference to the events of the first book as a previous adventure of Lando's, which he recounts while composing his autobiographical "Calrissian Chronicles".

Lando is arrested and brought before the colony's corrupt governor and the sorcerer Rokur Gepta, who will let him keep his life and liberty if he can locate the legendary Mindharp of the ancient and long-lost Sharu civilization.

Nearly a year after Lando and Vuffi Raa have left the Oseon system, while traveling in deep space they encounter Lehesu, a vacuum-breathing creature.

In Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, Calrissian is an unlockable playable character, having the characteristic of being able to kiss Leia's hand if she is nearby.

[43] According to Alyssa Rosenberg of The Washington Post, Lando is a "fascinating and fraught part of the 'Star Wars' legacy and the conversation around race in science fiction".

On his portrayal, she wrote, "One of Williams's accomplishments in 'Empire' and 'Return of the Jedi' is how much he [feels] like an old-fashioned movie star in a futuristic setting without making the performance seem incongruous.

"[44] In 2015, Billy Dee Williams publicly admitted that he received backlash from children who were angered by Lando's betrayal of Han in The Empire Strikes Back.